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Assessing the effectiveness of inflation targeting in promoting economic growth is crucial for policymakers in determining appropriate monetary policy measures. Given the lack of consensus regarding the impact of inflation targeting on economic growth, it prompts the question of whether inflation targeting indeed exerts a significant effect on economic growth.  This bachelor's thesis investigates the impact of inflation targeting on economic growth in developed countries over a 29-year period from 1991 to 2019. Using a methodology that accounts for both static and dynamic economic growth relationships, we analyze data from 45 developed countries, some employing inflation targeting and others not. Our findings suggest a positive effect of inflation targeting on economic growth in the static model, but autocorrelation issues necessitate the use of a dynamic model. The utilization of two distinct types of dummy variables yielded disparate outcomes compared to those obtained from the static model. Results from dynamic modeling indicate a slight negative effect of inflation targeting on economic growth. Together these results point to an inconclusive effect of inflation targeting on economic growth.

Using long panels of industry-specific offshoring information and subjectively reported well-being datasets mainly from Germany, which is also supported by datasets from the UK and Australia, this paper aims to investigate the relationship between offshoring and workers' subjective well-being in the source country. We employ panel data fixed-effects models with time-variant personality measures and industry-specific measures to alleviate the bias stemming from the non-random sorting of individuals in industries. Our findings suggest that offshoring negatively relates to workers' subjective well-being. The result is unexceptionally consistent across Germany, the UK, and Australia, and the effect is larger in business services and among high-skilled workers. We extensively discuss how contextual "fear-factors" prevailing in the source countries interact with the angst generated by the negative framing of offshoring. To single out such angst, we first show that objective and subjective job security concerns, job characteristics, and labor market conditions only marginally relate to the well-being effect of offshoring. Then, we investigate how the effect of offshoring on well-being is amplified by a larger set of contextual factors pertaining to temporary economic shocks, negative narratives about offshoring during electoral cycles, partisan political preferences, and high immigration rates. Finally, we show that a recent skill upgrade significantly diminishes the negative effect of offshoring on well-being.

A country is said to have economic growth if its income increases over time. Factors like capital, entrepreneurship, labor, and land determine economic growth. Stock prices rise when the firms in the country record an increase in the value of their goods and services. However, multinational corporations have been more vital in enhancing economic growth. These companies operate in more than one nation running businesses in other countries apart from the home country. Typically, these companies significantly increase economic growth because they form the basis of employment opportunities and technologically advanced production methods. The study aims to determine the impacts of multinational corporations on economic growth and thus determine whether nations benefit from multinational corporations in their economic development. Specifically, the study shall examine impacts of the foreign direct investment, the average investment shares per capita, the average annual population growth and the real gross domestic product per capita on the economic growth of nations.This will assess the impact of transnational corporations on factors of economic growth like physical capital, human resources, natural resources, and technology, the benefits, and challenges associated with international competition. The thesis used traditional economic variables to analyze the results of the economic growth in various countries using a multiple regression model. Moreover, systematic reviews of secondary data were collected from books, government reports, websites, journals, and newspapers to bring more insight into the study findings.

CEO compensation is a relevant topic in today's society that touches both political and economic questions which are of interest for the whole general public. It affects people indirectly through CEOs actions and how these actions affect company performances. Due to the fact that there is a financial crisis, this thesis has its aim to catch some light over CEO compensation and its relation to company performances, if there is one.

The purpose was to investigate if we could find a relation between CEO compensation and company performances by using variables which we considered significant for this study. These variables are collected from each company's annual reports and which we have chosen to focus on the two past years 2007 and 2008, as it is the most recent data. For the principle of our thesis a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was applied, to best suite the purpose. When finding a sustainable and significant result, regressions of different variables from the annual reports were drawn and the outcomes of these were interpreted and analyzed. Our findings show that turnover is the only variable which indicated any significant p-value in the regressions drawn. Of all regressions three show significance and all arerelated to turnover. Given these results we can conclude that the other variables are not related to the CEO compensation in this case study.

Date: 2023-06-15 

Level: Bachelor thesis in Business Administration, 15 cr 

Institution: School of Business, Society and Engineering, Mälardalen University 

Author: Andersson Haskic, Edvin

Title: Macroeconomic Consequences of Household Indebtedness: An Analysis of the Impact of Mortgages on Economic Fluctuations

Supervisor: Eriksson, Clas

Examiner: Widell, Lars

Keywords: household, indebtedness, mortgage, economic fluctuations

Research question: How do economic fluctuations affect household debt and how does household debt affect the macroeconomy? What role do credit market frictions and borrowing constraints play in this relationship? How can contagion effects contribute to systematic risk?

Purpose: To critically review and evaluate the existing literature on household indebtedness, utilizing theoretical economic models. The specific focus is on analyzing the causes and consequences of macroeconomic fluctuations on the Swedish housing market, and their impact on households and to analyze the macroeconomic implications of household indebtedness. The inverse relationship is also being analyzed.

Method: The methodology employed in conducting this paper involved a literature review, utilizing economic models and descriptive literature on the Swedish housing sector.

Conclusion: The conclusion of the analysis is that fluctuations in the economy have a significant impact on the Swedish housing market and households. Housing prices directly influence aggregate demand, leading to changes in household consumption and playing a role in financial crises and systemic risk through contagion effects. Banks' actions have implications for market stability with conditions such as wholesale funding amplifying asset prices and directly affecting housing prices.

Based on firm-level data over the period 1997–2002 for the Swedish manufacturing sector the objective of this paper is to analyze relative labor demand effects due to offshoring, separating between materials and services offshoring and also geographical location of trade partner. Overall, our results give no support to the fears that offshoring of materials or services lead to out-location of high-skilled activity in Swedish firms. Rather, this paper finds evidence that the aggregate effects from offshoring lead to increasing relative demand of high-skilled labor, mainly due to services offshoring to middle income countries.

The objective of this paper was to analyse effects on firm–level relative demand for skilled labour due to imports of intermediates (offshoring) and exports of intermediates (inshoring). The study is based on a data set of Swedish manufacturing firms, 1997–2002, using trade flows in intermediate goods and services, respectively. Descriptive data show that goods inshoring is much larger than goods offshoring, while the reverse is true for services. There is, however, a strong increase in services inshoring over the study period. Controlling for potential endogeneity in offshoring and inshoring, our results indicate that there is a positive effect of services offshoring on the skill composition of workers in Swedish firms, while no such causality can be established from inshoring.

Beror de minskade marknadsandelarna för svenskt gris-, kyckling- och nötkött till någon del på att den svenska marknaden för slaktdjur inte fungerar så bra som den kunde göra? I den här utredningen undersöker vi hur prisbildningen fungerar och hur affärsförhållandet mellan lantbrukare och slakteri ser ut. Vi kartlägger vi också strukturen i primärproduktionen och i slakterinäringen samt granskar slakteriföretagens lönsamhet. För att bättre kunna bedöma hur väl den svenska slaktdjursmarknaden fungerar görs även en internationell utblick.

The use of currency options has been grown widely during the latest years. This paper tries to answer whether hedge strategies using currency options are superior to forward exchange contracts or not.

In this paper we derive a method for the estimation of symmetric input–output tables (SIOTs), which makes it possible to use the commodity technology assumption even when use- and make tables are rectangular. The method also solves the problem of negative coefficients. In the empirical part we derive annual SIOTs in order to evaluate the differences between SIOTs calculated with different methods and the change in technical coefficients over time. Our results, based on data for Sweden, show that the impact of using different technology assumptions is rather large. However, in a factor content of trade application the impact of different technology assumptions does not seem to be very important. Also the size of the changes in the technical coefficients over time is found to be quite large, indicating the importance of calculating SIOTs annually.

The question of how to design efficient environmental policies has become one of the most important questions of our time, but finding the answer it is not easy. Simple models of environmental regulation do not take into account the complexity of real markets. One aspect that is sometimes ignored is the market structure of the regulated industry. This critical review of the literature shows that market structure can both influence and be influenced by environmental regulation and that determining the optimal environmental policy is complicated.

In this thesis, we propose a new and simple approach of extending the single-factor Heston stochastic volatility model to a more flexible one in solving option pricing problems.  In this approach, the volatility process for the underlying asset dynamics depends on the time to maturity of the option. As this idea is inspired by the Heath-Jarrow-Morton framework which models the evolution of the full dynamics of forward rate curves for various maturities, we name this approach as the HJM-type stochastic volatility (HJM-SV)  model. We conduct an empirical analysis by calibrating this model to real-market option data for underlying assets including an equity  (ABB stock) and a market index (EURO STOXX 50), for two separated time spans from Jan 2017 to Dec 2017 (before the COVID-19 pandemic) and from Nov 2019 to Nov 2020 (after the start of COVID-19 pandemic). We investigate the optimal way of dividing the set of option maturities into three classes, namely, the short-maturity, middle-maturity, and long-maturity classes. We calibrate our HJM-SV model to the data in the following way, for each class a single-factor Heston stochastic volatility model is calibrated to the corresponding market data. We address the question that how well the new HJM-SV model captures the feature of implied volatility surface given by the market data.

This study investigates the environmental and economic impact of integrating hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) in horse farms to produce hydrochar with potential environmental and economic benefits as a fertilizer. The results indicate that HTC has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and eutrophication impacts compared to traditional methods. Despite the high CAPEX making the HTC integration economically unfeasible, the system can become viable if hydrochar is used instead of purchased fertilizers and if the capital investment is reduced by 54%. To realize these environmental and economic benefits, financial support to lower the initial investment will be required. In addition, further R&D and increased demand for small-to-medium scale HTC can reduce capital cost.

This paper studies data from a 25-year period in the history of Sweden and the US, ranging from 1993 to 2017. The aim of the thesis was to investigate the impact of immigration on the income inequality of the respective countries while also considering the impact of other specific variables. In order to estimate the impact of the variables, both static and dynamic models were used, with the Gini coefficient being the dependent variable. With the ordinary least square giving short-run estimates and the error correction model providing short- and long- run estimates simultaneously, the main variable for immigration, being the foreign-born population, showed a strong positive relationship with income inequality. For the estimation, the immigration variable was also split into high- and low-skilled immigrants as well as different age groups. In conclusion, we find that immigration in Sweden and the US has high levels of influence on the income inequality for both countries.

The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between economic growth and  inflation in Sweden, Finland and the USA from 1995 to 2022 to determine if any  significant relationship exists, and if so, whether it is negative or positive. The method used is a multi-variable time series regression using the Quantity theory of  money as the base with GDP growth as the dependent variable and money supply  growth, inflation and interest rate growth as the independent variables.  Three different models of regression were used to best compare the results and how  significant they were, which resulted in current inflation not having a significant influence in economic growth for none of the countries in all three countries. However, lagged inflation showed a significant effect on all three countries.

Problem: The creation of the European Union gave people the right of free movement between the membership countries. In theory, the creation of a single market should create many additional employment and earning opportunities for the workers in the member states of the EU (Bauer & Zammermann, 1999 cited at Borjas, 2010). Some natives believe that an increase in immigration will post a threat to them. They believe that their wages will go down and jobs will be taken from them. Is this true or is it just a sign of xenophobia?

Purpose of the Research: The purpose of this study was to replicate successfully the study: “Examining the Relationship between Immigration and Unemployment Using National Insurance Number Registration Data” by Lucchino, P., Rosazza – Bondibene, C., and Portes, J. from 2012. Then the same research methods were used in Swedish data analysis.

Methods: Data on unemployment and immigration was collected from Sweden and the UK and multiple regressions were run using the STATA11 software.

Conclusion: The immigration rate had no significant affect on the unemployment rate both in the UK and Sweden. However, adding a one year lagged immigration rate was found to be significant at a 5% significance level in the Swedish analysis, but was insignificant in the UK analysis. The control variables for labor supply proved to be insignificant in the analysis of both countries.

This study delves into the socioeconomically disadvantaged segments of society to understand the consequences of elevated inflation rates worsened by concurrent global crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukrainian conflict. Through a comprehensive examination of consumption patterns and purchasing capabilities over a four-year period, we anticipate a decline in consumption rates among the demographic groups under investigation. Empirics was gathered through the use of a survey. Results can be related to theory, such as substitution effect, income effect and monetarism. Previous research could be tied to our findings. This decline is attributed to the inflationary pressures constraining aggregate consumer spending, leading to increased expenditures on essential commodities and decreased spending on less necessary goods. The analysis reveals discernible disparities in consumption patterns, confirming our initial expectations and underscoring the impact of economic conditions on vulnerable demographics.

This thesis explores and reviews extensively previous studies on the economic impact of mass immigration on Sweden with a special interest in the native population, addressing the widespread belief that the inflow of immigrants means a strain on the country's resources and negatively affects the natives. The research distinguishes between voluntary and involuntary migration and examines their respective contributions and challenges to economic growth, educational opportunities, and social mobility. Using literature and data from Statistiska Centralbyrån (Statistics Sweden)(SCB), Migrationsverket (Swedish migration services), and various empirical and theoretical studies, the research conducts an extensive literature review and analyzes whether immigration acts as an economic gain or drain for Sweden. Key aspects analyzed in the literature include but are not limited to employment dynamics, country of origin, age distribution, and education levels of immigrants. The findings uncover a complex interplay between the economic benefits and challenges posed by immigration, highlighting mixed outcomes in terms of labor market integration, wage impacts and public welfare contributions. This comprehensive analysis aims to provide a nuanced understanding of how mass immigration impacts Sweden's economy and the welfare of its native population.

Keywords: Immigration, Public sector finance, native impact, fiscal effect

There is a big interest for alternative investment strategies than investing in traditional asset classes. Commodities are having a boom dynamic with increasing prices. This thesis is therefore based on applying Modern Portfolio Theory concept to this alternative asset class.

In this paper we manage to create optimal portfolios of commodities for investors with known and unknown risk preferences. When comparing expected returns to actual returns we found that for the investor with the known risk preference almost replicated the return of the markets. The other investor with unknown risk preference also profited but not as efficient as the market portfolio.

This article extends the Coase Conjecture to ethical issues of initial acquisitions of property rights. The Coase Conjecture complements the Lockean labour-mixing criterion to limit the boundaries of morally legitimate initial acquisitions of unowned property; whenever the Coase Conjecture applies, the Lockean Proviso that there be “enough and as good” left is automatically satisfied. This holds provided that, when a claim is made, the marginal willingness to pay for the last portion of it is zero (infra-marginally, willingness to pay may be arbitrarily high). Thus, the market price of the claim is zero, except for the part of it that the claimant inhabits or improves. “Excessive” claims therefore come to have a zero market price, so anyone may take possession of them, by purchase or theft. In either case they must compensate the original claimant by a zero amount. It follows that non-claimants do not lose by putatively “excessive” grabs by claimants. This article argues that any initial claims are just under these circumstances.

This paper appears to be the first to analyse political campaign incentives when the electorate vote at different moments before Election Day, a phenomenon known as early or advance voting. Many jurisdictions accommodate such voting by accepting mail-in ballots or by opening polling places before Election Day. Since politicians can thereby add campaign promises while citizens vote, they have an incentive to add promises valued by late-voting segments as Election Day approaches. This implies that early-voting segments of the electorate will pay higher taxes and receive lower transfers than had been announced when they voted. Late-voting segments benefit.

In this empirical analysis of voting patterns in five countries on days when one or more national referenda were held, voter turnout appears to decline in the number of concurrent referenda, in contrast to standard theories’ predictions and regardless of method used to hold constant the quality of the referenda. Multiple concurrent referenda imply ‘quantity discounts’ as one may vote on more ballots in one visit to the polling station. They should also draw more voters due to the wider range of interests attracted when more issues are up for vote. Yet, none of this seems to happen in the data. More recent developments, such as rule utilitarian and information-based theories of voting, fare similarly poorly in light of the evidence presented in this article; a social theory of voting does better.

In some recent economic growth models there can be decreasing pollution along with increasing per capita income, if the rate of improvement in the environmenta ltechnology is sufficiently high. A central function describes how gross pollution and environmental technology interact to determine net pollution, which in the previous works has a log-linear form. This letter provides an example in which this function is generalized to a CES type. The result is that the environmental technology factor in the long run may be either implausibly potent or almost ineffective in transforming a high gross pollution to a low net pollution if the function deviates from the log-linearcase.

This book explores the debate on how to reconcile economic growth with protection of the natural environment, and the closely related discussion on whether an increasing scarcity of natural resources will eventually force economic growth to cease. The debate focuses on whether environmental policies will benefit the economy or not, and is divided into growth optimists and growth pessimists. In general, economists have been optimistic and have pointed to the possibilities of technological progress and substitution, yet they also acknowledge that natural resources and environmental concern do restrict economic growth. The difficulty lies in quantifying the constraint to economic growth. Modern growth economists have constructed models to examine to what extent 'growth pessimism' is theoretically warranted. This book provides an introduction to some of these models, brings together the discussion between growth optimists and pessimists, and presents the theory behind their arguments. It presents models where both sides can meet and where both are able to derive expected results with the parameter values that they deem appropriate. From there, the discussions can turn to the empirical observations about these parameters.

This paper explores economic policies related to the potential conflict between economic growth and the environment. It applies a model with directed technological change and focuses on the case with low elasticity of substitution between clean and dirty inputs in production. New technology is substituted for the polluting input, which results in a gradual decline in pollution along the optimal long-run growth path. In contrast to some recent work, the era of pollution and environmental policy is here not just a transitory phase in economic development. The optimal policy includes a perpetual subsidy to `green' research. The tax rate of pollution is monotonously increasing, while the pollution tax payments constitute a constant share of income. These policies result in a quite modest growth drag.

We present a model of the electricity market which has a simple connection to the rest of the economy, due to a quasi-linear utility function.A key stochastic parameter shifts electricity demand between points of time.The correlation between these demand shifts and the variation of supply from variable renewable electricity (VRE) sources is crucial for the equilibrium price of electricity.Based on these equilibria we compute the value factors of VREs, as well as producer and consumer surpluses.An outcome of the model analysis is that value factors of VREs decrease as their penetration gets higher, which is also commonly found empirically, but only up to a point.

This paper explores the interaction between human capital and innovations in the process of economic growth. Using a model of endogenous economic growth, the focus of our analysis is on the incentives to acquire human capital and how they are affected by taxes on human capital and other policy instruments. In contrast to many other growth models we find that the taxation on human capital has a substantial negative effect on the accumulation of it. This in turn lowers the income growth rate. While subsidies to research and to intermediate inputs have positive effects on growth (and must be strictly positive in social optimum), they do not necessarily imply that there will be larger stock of human capital in the economy. If the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption is sufficiently low, these policy instruments stimulate growth by inducing a reallocation of a shrinking stock of human capital in the direction of research.

Empirical evidence suggests that increased democracy reduces pollution. Using a median-voter model (where a democratization reform typically changes the income of the median voter), we analyze how the effect of a change of the individual income differs from the effect of a change in the economy-wide productivity in the determination of pollution. We find that a democratization reform that brings poorer groups into the franchise leads to lower pollution only if the elasticity of the marginal utility of consumption, σ, is smaller than unity. At the same time, the EKC literature suggests that a country tends to improve aspects of the environment as its per capita income rises, at least when it is above some critical level. For the model to be consistent with this observation, when σ < 1, the transformation function between income and pollution must be generous, i.e. little income has to be given up as pollution is reduced. © 2013 Springer Japan.

A gender difference in risk preferences, with women being more averse to risky choices, is a robust experimental finding. Speculating on the sources of this difference, Croson and Gneezy recently pointed to the tendency for women to experience emotions more strongly and suggested that feeling more strongly about negative outcomes would lead to greater risk-aversion. Here we test this hypothesis in an international survey with 424 respondents from India and 416 from US where we ask questions about a hypothetical lottery. In both countries we find that emotions about outcomes are stronger among women, and that this effect partially mediates gender difference in willingness to enter the lottery.

n the classic Secretary Problem it has been established that people tend to search somewhat less than is optimal, and a number of explanations have been suggested. Here we propose a new explanation, the Similar-But-Incorrect Intuitions Hypothesis, which says that suboptimal search behavior is to be expected because optimal strategies vary disproportionately with subtle details of the search problem setup, whereas people seem to entertain general intuitions about optimal search. We find support for this hypothesis in experiments on a new search problem, the Explore-and-Collect Problem, where the player collects utility from an option every time it is tried and options can be recalled. Although the optimal search effort in this problem is much smaller than for the Secretary Problem, people tend to search only marginally less. This is not predicted by previous explanations for suboptimal search.

Based on individual variation in cooperative inclinations, we define the “hard problem of cooperation” as that of achieving high levels of cooperation in a group of non-cooperative types. Can the hard problem be solved by institutions with monitoring and sanctions? In a laboratory experiment we find that the answer is affirmative if the institution is imposed on the group but negative if development of the institution is left to the group to vote on. In the experiment, participants were divided into groups of either cooperative types or non-cooperative types depending on their behavior in a public goods game. In these homogeneous groups they repeatedly played a public goods game regulated by an institution that incorporated several of the key properties identified by Ostrom: operational rules, monitoring, rewards, punishments, and (in one condition) change of rules. When change of rules was not possible and punishments were set to be high, groups of both types generally abided by operational rules demanding high contributions to the common good, and thereby achieved high levels of payoffs. Under less severe rules, both types of groups did worse but non-cooperative types did worst. Thus, non-cooperative groups profited the most from being governed by an institution demanding high contributions and employing high punishments. Nevertheless, in a condition where change of rules through voting was made possible, development of the institution in this direction was more often voted down in groups of non-cooperative types. We discuss the relevance of the hard problem and fit our results into a bigger picture of institutional and individual determinants of cooperative behavior.

During a lifetime an individual is faced with the decision whether or not to pursue additional years of education, and one may ask if this will generate some sort of payoff, for example, if higher earnings is to be received later in life. The aim of this paper is to investigate how an individual’s earnings is affected by the amount of years one spends in school and also to see if gender and experience are contributing factors. We will investigate these relationships by first introducing the two theories “Human Capital” and “The Mincer Equation”. These build upon each other and are connected. Thereafter, modifications of the Standard Mincer equation will develop our four different regression equations. These regressions will be run on an American cross-sectional data set, by use of the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS).

Our chosen explanatory variables do affect earnings and the specific data set shows that additional years of schooling do increase earnings. We also found a distinct difference in hourly earnings between men and women.

According to the numerical data from the past three decades, income inequality remains a significant challenge on a global scale, irrespective of the countries’ development status. Even though the global economy has experienced growth, income inequalities have not decreased correspondingly. Global integration, international commerce, economic expansions, and changes in labor market dynamics all together participate in the process of shaping economic inequalities. The thesis investigates the impact of various macroeconomic indicators on income inequality and attempts to identify evidence for the bell-shaped Kuznets curve. Fixed- and random-effects models are utilized for the analysis, in which balanced panel data from 52 high- and middle-income countries covering the period 1998 through 2020 are considered. The results of our study identify a U-turned relationship between GDP per capita and income inequality, which does not support the Kuznets hypothesis. Furthermore, we also identified that higher average educational levels reduce income inequality, while international commerce and higher unemployment rates increase it.

The aim of this study is to investigate whether certain configurations of management controls dominate in certain societies (socio-cultural contexts) and whether the effectiveness of a given archetype of management control systems (MCSs) varies depending on the socio-cultural setting the society in which it operates. The study focuses on three socio-cultural groups and the corresponding institutional contexts (an Anglo-Saxon group, a Central European group, and a Northern European group) and three MCS archetypes (delegated bureaucratic control, delegated output control, and programmable output control). We use unique data from a cross-national, interview-based survey encompassing 610 strategic business units from nine countries (seven European countries plus Canada and Australia). The idea that firms tend to adapt MCSs to the socio-cultural context does not gain empirical support in this study. No significant differences in the distribution of MCSs between the three socio-cultural groups are noted. However, we do find that programmable output control has a more positive impact on effectiveness in Anglo-Saxon cultures, while delegated output control has a more positive impact on effectiveness in Northern Europe. Taken together these findings indicate that distinct differences between societies make a particular MCS design more appropriate in a given society, but where such differences are not dramatic (as in the present case), multiple MCS designs can be found in the same society.

The relationship between GDP growth rate and income distribution has been the primary subject of many economic theories and research projects. Using regression analysis and correlation studies to look at data for 1975 and 2009, this thesis explores the relationship between economic development, income disparity, and investments in physical capital, with an emphasis on socioeconomic status. Drawing from the neoclassical growth model and theoretical frameworks, the study explores how various factors influence the growth rate of real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. The results highlight the significant role of investment in physical capital in driving economic growth, while also emphasizing the detrimental effects of income inequality and poverty. Through comprehensive analysis, the thesis provides insights into the complex interplay between economic growth, investment, inequality, and socioeconomic status. These findings contribute to both academic research and policy formulation, informing efforts to foster sustainable and inclusive economic growth. Ultimately, the study underscores the importance of addressing income inequality and leveraging the potential of economic growth to benefit all segments of society.

The negative relationship between women’s time in paid and unpaid work is well established in empirical research. We contribute to this literature with an analysis of Swedish population register data 2000–2010 covering a tax discount reform introduced in 2007 which implied a 50% cost reduction for outsourcing of domestic work. We use difference-in-difference propensity score matching to estimate the extent to which purchases of domestic work implies increased time in paid work approximated by earnings. For our samples of married women, the results indicate that domestic outsourcing corresponding to 2.0–3.5 percent of full-time work (40–70 h per year) increase labor market work by a similar amount, 2.4–3.6% of annual earnings. We discuss several possible explanations as to why these estimates are substantially higher than reported by previous studies.

Regeringen har givit Jordbruksverket i uppdrag att kartlägga vilka länder utanför EU som kan anses ha stor potential för svensk export av livsmedel samt göra en analys av möjligheterna att utveckla en mer informativ handelsstatistik som bl.a. tar hänsyn till vidareexport.

Jordbruksverkets kartläggning och analys grundas bl.a. på en enkätundersökning, djupintervjuer av livsmedelsföretag, dialog med berörda myndigheter samt information i officiella databaser.

Av enkätundersökningen framkom att 22 procent av företagen såg länder utanför EU som möjliga framtida exportmarknader. Inom Europa bedöms Norge vara en potentiell marknad. I övriga världen är det Kina, Ryssland och USA som ligger i topp. Flest potentiella exportmarknader ser företagen för alkoholfria/alkoholsvaga drycker. Kött- och charkföretag anger potentiella marknader i bortre Asien men även i Afrika och i vårt direkta närområde såsom Norge och Ryssland. Dessutom finns ett antal bearbetade livsmedel, ofta unika produkter, där företagen ser exportmöjligheter i en rad länder spridda i flera världsdelar.

Utifrån gjord analys bedöms det finnas en stor potential att öka exporten av livsmedel och jordbruksprodukter till framförallt USA, Kina, Japan och Ryssland. Länderna ifråga är mycket stora importörer av livsmedel och jordbruksprodukter och har också identifierats av många svenska livsmedelsindustriföretag som intressanta marknader. Exporten försvåras dock i nuläget av bl.a. tillämpningen av regelverket på det sanitära och fytosanitära området. Även Kanada, Sydkorea, Saudiarabien, Indien och Malaysia, med vilka EU nyligen har eller är på gång att förhandla fram frihandelsavtal, bedöms vara kandidater för ökad svensk export. Norge bedöms även fortsättningsvis vara en viktig exportmarknad för Sverige.

I och med att statistik över import och export ofta används som underlag för beslutsfattare inom olika områden är det önskvärt att handelsstatistiken speglar faktiska förhållanden. I nuläget blåser vidareexport av bl.a. norsk lax upp den svenska handelsstatistiken vilket ger oss en felaktig bild av den faktiska handeln. Hur Sverige redovisar handelsstatistik är reglerat i EU-lagstiftning. Det är därför inte möjligt att korrigera för vidareexport i den officiella statistiken. Däremot är det möjligt för Jordbruksverket att regelbundet publicera en bearbetad handelsstatistik.

Då SCB i dagsläget samlar in en stor mängd registerbaserad data, bl.a. från Skatteverket, bedöms det finnas underlag för att från befintlig statistik kunna redovisa exportens betydelse för lönsamhet, sysselsättning och tillväxt utan att öka berörda företags administrativa börda.

För att underlätta exporten till de potentiella marknaderna vill företagen ha en samlad information kring exportfrågor, en effektiv hantering av landgodkännanden och stöd i den internationella affärsutvecklingen. Utifrån dessa önskemål nämns i rapporten ett antal åtgärder kopplade till information, landgodkännande, marknadskännedom och kontaktnät, ekonomi samt handelsstatistik som kan främja svensk livsmedelsexport.

Centrality measures in network analysis have become a popular measurement tool for identifying coherent nodes within a network. In the context of stock markets, the centrality measure helps to identify key performing ele- ments and strengths for specific stocks and determine their impact on disrupting market value and performance. Multiple studies presented practical implementations of centrality measures for determining trends and perform- ance of a particular market. However, fewer studies applied centrality measures to predict trends in the stock market.

Social efficiency and employment effects of the Swedish agricultural policy payments. The investment grants for rural development have environmental effects and the agrienvironmental payments have employment effects. To be able to allocate the CAP budget and design the policy measures optimally, employment effects and social efficiency have to be considered together – including all environmental impacts as well as the costs and market products of agriculture. The study investigates how large these crosswise effects are, and what the overall outcome of the single farm payment and a choice of payments in the Swedish rural development programme is.

Power systems with a large share of inherently intermittent renewable energy sources require new approaches to system operation. Demand response is seen as a potential possibility for contributing to maintaining power balance in a future energy system with large amounts of volatile renewable energy generation (Bartusch et al., 2011; Torriti, Hassan & Leach, 2010). It would be a measure to reduce costs for maintaining the power balance, which is believed to become more expensive if traditional measures is to handle the increasing intermittency (Albadi & El-Saadany, 2008; Kirschen, 2003; Siano, 2014). The study of the flexibility of electricity demand is an essential key to exploring the current and future potential of demand side response for power system services.  

For both solar and wind power, forecasts for several hours ahead may have a lower accuracy. Statistically, the forecasts become better the closer they approach real operation. In practice however, this does not happen in each case. This means that the flexibility need for a certain hour will be different, depending on when the need is identified, i.e. different notice times.

For consumers to be flexible, there are several parameters that impact their ability and willingness to react to incentives with a change of load. Elasticity (self- and cross-elasticity) has been defined in literature to describe consumer flexibility with respect to a change of electricity price and is often referred to when modelling the flexibility of consumers (Albadi & El-Saadany, 2008; Lijesen, 2007). Flexibility with respect to electricity prices or other financial incentives has been widely studied in literature on smart grids and demand response.

Another important parameter for electric demand to be flexible is the notice time, i.e. the time span between informing the consumer about a future need for reorganizing their consumption and providing a change of consumption as a system service. The impact of notice time on the flexibility of electricity consumers has not yet been systematically researched. It is logical that the willingness and ability of certain consumers to provide flexibility decreases as notice time becomes shorter. There are, however, some loads that even may become more flexible, the shorter the notice time, such as e.g. the charging of electric vehicles.  

An essential basis for flexible consumers is the communication infrastructure that is used for sending price signals, bids and further market parameters depending on the demand response program. The type and information content of such communication is enabled through technological devices. These smart devices – which in most cases must exceed the function of only smart metering (Siano, 2014) – can have different properties and requirements that are determined by the demand response program and its respective requirements on data exchange. Therefore, the technological implementation and the impact of the limitations originating from the same are discussed in this study as well.  

For a quantitative analysis of customer flexibility, both price and notice time are imperative parameters. Former has been studied in numerous references (Bartusch et al., 2011; Gyamfi, Krumdieck & Urmee, 2013; Kirschen et al., 2000; Lijesen, 2007) whereas the impact of the latter has not yet been examined in depth. In this paper, a study on consumer flexibility with respect to notice time is presented. It is analyzed how the ability to reschedule electricity demand during a time interval in the future is impacted by terms of notifying and updating flexible consumers. For this, a market and demand response program optimizing social welfare is developed that allows for an analysis of notice time dependent consumers.

This paper demonstrates that commonly used methods for eliciting value of time can give downward bias and investigates whether this can be reversed by ‘referencing’ as has been suggested (e.g., by Hensher in Transp Res B 44:735–752, 2010), i.e. with attributes of choice alternatives pivoted around a recently made journey. Value-of-time choice experiments were conducted in two rounds. In the first round, real and hypothetical purchases of performance of a simple time-consuming task were done to assess hypothetical bias; in the second round, participants were asked to do hypothetical travel choices with and without ‘referencing’ to a specific occasion, to be able to test ‘referencing’ as a remedy to the bias confirmed in the first round. A negative hypothetical bias was found for allocation of time at another occasion than the present (but not for a decision concern allocation of time ‘here and now’). A striking result was held from the second round experiments: ‘referencing’ indeed affects responses, but by reducing the elicited implicit value of time, so any negative hypothetical bias that would exist without ‘referencing’ would have been further magnified by the ‘referencing’ design.

The combination of two or more portfolio rules is theoretically convex in return-risk space, which provides for a new class of portfolio rules that gives purpose to the Mean-Variance framework out-of-sample. The author investigates the performance loss from estimation risk between the unconstrained Mean-Variance portfolio and the out-of-sample Global Minimum Variance portfolio. A new two-fund rule is developed in a specific class of combined rules, between the equally weighted portfolio and a mean-variance portfolio with the covariance matrix being estimated by linear shrinkage. The study shows that this rule performs well out-of-sample when covariance estimation error and bias are balanced. The rule is performing at least as good as its peer group in this class of combined rules.